3. The Potential
• Knowledge and appreciation for healthy
foods
• Environmental awareness
• Increased intake in vegetables
4. The Potential
• To serve as outdoor classrooms integrating core
subject material into garden activities
• Interactive and hands-on lessons that engage
students
6. Results from Study #1
The Nutrition Education & Gardening group improved upon their
willingness to taste all vegetables tested after the intervention!
7. Results from Study #2
Change in Participants’ Attitudes
90%
80%
70%
Mean Change (%)
60%
50% "Gardening is easy"
40% "Gardening is fun"
30% "I can make a salad"
20%
10%
0%
LA Sprouts Control Group
8. Discussion
• These studies show that garden programs are an effective way
to:
• Improve willingness to try new vegetables
• Improve overall gardening knowledge
• Increase preference of vegetables
• However, there is limited empirical data on other impacts
• More research continues to be done, and many school
gardening efforts and resources are available for those
interested!
9. References
• Morgan, P.J., Warren, J.M., Lubans, D.R., Saunders, K.L., Quick,
G.I., & Collins, C.E. The impact of nutrition education with and
without a school garden on knowledge, vegetable intake and
preferences and quality of school life among primary-school
students. Public Health Nutr. 2010;13(11):1931–40.
• Gatto, N.M., Ventura, E.E., Cook, L.T., Gyllenhammer, L.E., &
Davis, J.N. (2012). LA Sprouts: a garden-based nutrition
intervention pilot program influences motivation and
preferences for fruits and vegetables in Latino youth. Journal
of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 112(6), 913–20.
doi:10.1016/j.jand.2012.01.014
Notas do Editor
In this opening slide I plan on explaining what led me to explore this topic. This past year, I have been very interested in applying to FoodCorps, which is an organization that places service members in limited-resource communities to teach children about healthy food and where it comes from through the development of school gardens. While I immediately assumed this would garner successful and rewarding results, my scientific mind got me thinking that before devoting oneself to a cause, it would beneficial to investigate whether or not these types of interventions have elicited positive results. While there is not a body of literature related to FoodCorps specifically, I decided to focus on researching the effectiveness of school gardens in general. Seeing as this topic can be slightly controversial (being that some people don’t believe resources should be spent on these projects or that they are taking away from classroom time) I thought it would be fascinating to explore the specific impacts and effects of school gardens on students’ attitudes towards nutrition and their environment to better understand if the outcomes are worth the effort. This presentation provides insight on this topic from a few key research studies.
I added this video into the slideshow with the intention of only showing from 1:15-2:05 (I wasn’t sure if it was possible to edit out parts of a YouTube video so I figured it would be okay to skip to that part and stop after 2:05). I decided to include this short video segment because I wanted to address the fact that school gardens are not a new concept, but that there has been recent revitalization due to many factors such as the increasing prevalence of processed foods and fast foods across the nation and even in many schools. I also wanted to touch on the more community and nation based goals of school gardens from various professionals (educators, healthcare workers, environmentalists) before talking about more specific potential outcomes in the next slide. I thought both this slide and the next one would provide a foundation of reasons as to why the investigation of school gardens has merit.
In this slide I plan on explaining why school gardens are becoming more common at local schools across the United States. They serve a variety of purposes and have a great amount of potential as learning tools, which is why I think they have and are currently being researched. School gardens have the potential to increase students’ knowledge and appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables and subsequently their willingness to try new healthy foods, which could provide the foundation for a healthier future. These “outdoor classrooms” may elicit a broader scope of awareness in children to their environment because kids have the chance to get outside and be connected to the Earth. Children also have the potential to learn a variety of new skills and build character traits such as responsibility and cooperation. In addition, standard concepts of Math, Language Arts, and Science can be taught through garden-based learning activities, such as measuring the perimeter and area of the garden bed or journaling about their experiences.
Children have the potential to learn a variety of new skills and build character traits such as responsibility and cooperation while working in a garden. In addition, standard concepts of Math, Language Arts, and Science can be taught through garden-based learning activities, such as measuring the perimeter and area of the garden bed, journaling about their experience, or even measuring the pH of the soil in a fun and interactive manner. These types of lessons utilize a variety of skills and help students connect their education to real life experiences.
After investigating many research articles, I was able to identify common themes between them. Many studies were testing the effectiveness of school gardens on improving knowledge and understanding of the gardens, increasing preferences and consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, and looking at any change in attitude towards the environment or other aspects of the garden. The studies testing improved knowledge of the gardens tested concepts such as students’ ability to identify fruits and vegetables, gardening activities, tools and their use, and connecting the activities to community or global links. Preference tests often measured students’ willingness to try to vegetables and their ranking of the taste. Vegetable intake tests were harder to measure as dietary recalls often result in errors, and these results were often less favorable.
This table represents the results from a study published in 2010 in the Journal of Public Health Nutrition. The study investigated the impact of nutrition education with or without a school garden program on students’ preferences, knowledge, vegetable intake, and overall quality of school life. This specific table displays the “preferences” results from the control, nutrition education alone group, and nutrition education plus gardening group. The red box highlights the pre and post results from the nutrition education and gardening group, showing an increase in willingness to taste a variety of vegetables and eat these vegetables as a snack for nearly all categories. Overall, the intervention of nutrition education and gardening led to a greater willingness to try these vegetables compared to nutrition education alone and no intervention. However, no significant differences were found between groups on quality of school life scores or vegetable intake.
These results come from a different study entitled LA Sprouts: a garden-based nutrition intervention pilot program influences motivation and preferences for fruits and vegetables in Latino youth. This study was a more comprehensive intervention consisting of a cooking and nutrition class as well as a gardening class. The results in this table represent the mean percent change in attitudes and perceptions of the selected statements after the completion of the intervention. The results show that a program like this has the potential to increase the attitudes, knowledge, and preference for fruits and vegetables.
Study #1 shows that a school garden program along with nutrition education from an instructor can be an effective method in increasing preferences and willingness of children to try new vegetables. This result coupled with a greater ability to identify vegetables compared to the other groups suggests that an increase in knowledge and awareness was also garnered from the garden project. However, there were no major differences between groups in other impacts being tested, such as quality of school life or overall increase in consumption. It is thought that this inconclusive data could be linked to inaccurate assessment measures, such as the 24 hour dietary recall to measure vegetable consumption in younger children. This method can sometimes be inaccurate due to forgetting exactly what was eaten or incorrectly guessing the exact portion size. Study #2 provides evidence for an increase in knowledge and change in attitudes towards gardening, however this study included topics not covered in the first one such as a cooking class. There are other studies investigating similar measures that are currently taking place, and it will be exciting to find out if they are using different assessment measures, and whether their results reveal other information that may help shape the future of this effort.